Eye and Bone
by castlebuilders
Summary: AU. After her father dies, Tara runs not to Charming, but to her mother's family—in Ireland. In Belfast. As she's drawn into a world she thought she escaped, she learns secrets that threaten to destroy the lives both of those she left behind and the new family she'll do anything to protect.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: **This has been nagging my brain for the past few months so I finally decided to get it out on paper. This will be more narratively focused than my other stories, which are more character studies than anything, and I'm really excited about that. There's going to be a little noir, a little mystery, a little romance. Who knows?

This story sets the date of Tara's dad's death as about a year and a half before S1, and will be wildly AU in some regards while simply moving other bits of canon up a few years. I very much hope you like it.

(For those of you following WDIWWWY, very sorry about the delay in updating. It's just not coming to me. I'm working on it, but I don't want to post anything I'm not proud of. I am a slow writer in general, and I do have a full time job… but rest assured, I want to get it out as soon as I can.)

* * *

I burned my life, that I may find  
A passion wholly of the mind,  
Thought divorced from eye and bone  
Ecstasy come to breath alone.  
I broke my life, to seek relief  
From the flawed light of love and grief.  
—_The Alchemist_, Louise Bogan

* * *

Once, when she was a teenager, the boy she'd been madly in love with had accused her of running away from her problems. She had been furious at the suggestion of it, but she'd been on her way out of Charming, California for months, so her argument hadn't carried much weight. And when she was done with undergrad, when she hadn't needed the in-state tuition and broken home pity scholarships, it was true: Tara Knowles had run nearly clear across the country to Chicago.

And for the past few months as her father lay dying in her childhood home—in between the brief, impersonal phone calls with his doctors at St. Thomas—Tara had been speaking with a host of faculty and supervisors about looking for another job. She liked Chicago Presbyterian; she liked Chicago itself, the balmy summers and the cold bite of winter, the energy that buoyed and thrilled her more than the small town she had grown up in ever had. But at twenty-nine years old, Tara knew herself well enough to know when she was on her way out. And, like the moment when she had gotten her first college acceptance letter in the mail or when in her sophomore year she had decided on a premed track, Tara could pinpoint the exact moment her nomad's heart had abandoned Chicago.

It had started with a letter.

Tara had never known her mother's family; Caitlin Byrne-Knowles had grown up in Northern Ireland, the willful daughter of two devoted Catholics, and had abandoned her home for the sunny shores of America at age nineteen—a short vacation that had turned into a whirlwind marriage within three months and a pregnancy in seven.

"I met your father," she had told Tara at five years old in her lilting voice, when asked about her life before America, "and then we moved to California, and then we had you." She had pressed a gentle kiss to her daughter's forehead. "And that's when my life began. The only life that matters."

Four years later, she was dead. Car accident. And though Tara remembered her mother with nothing but fondness—as a young child, before death and before her father's drinking, she had lived in a home full of love and affection—as she got older she wondered if her mother had intended to smash the guard rail. Wondered if her mother had buried all her unhappiness down deep, where it wouldn't touch her daughter, let it kill her slowly from the inside. Maybe she'd seen the car accident coming and had been too beat down to fight it. Maybe she'd faced it head-on.

Sometimes, when things were bad, Tara wondered: If she'd inherited her mother's wild heart, maybe she'd inherit her fate, too.

She's received the letter about seven months ago, right when things with her father started to get bad, a confluence of fate if she'd ever seen one. It was postmarked from Belfast, from an Amelia Collins. From her mother's sister.

Tara had read it over and over until the words, the shapes of the letters, were pressed like ink on the backs of her eyelids. Amelia was her mother's younger sister. She hadn't spoken to Caitlin since she'd left Ireland. She had a younger brother, too, Sean. They wanted to meet Tara. They wanted her to come to Ireland.

When Tara had finally worked up the courage to call her, when she heard the thick sound of a voice choked by tears on the other end, she had cried, too. She had heard her mother's voice in Amelia's and felt it like a song calling her home.

And that was the impetus: knowing she was not just running, but had a place to run _to_. She'd mentally checked out of Chicago months ago and asked for a travel placement at a hospital in Belfast. She'd gotten help to slog through all the bureaucratic bullshit, the paperwork, the studying, the qualifications, the work visa, the interviews—and now there was only one thing keeping her rooted in America.

* * *

Tara peered through the windshield of her rental and up at the hospital. St. Thomas looked the same as it had when she was a kid. The whole of Charming looked the same.

Her flight had gotten in that morning and she'd come straight from the airport to the hospital. She wasn't planning on staying overnight—wasn't planning more than staying a few hours, actually. She wanted to say her last goodbyes, finish up the paperwork, and turn around and leave without anyone knowing she was here. There were too many bad memories here to risk unearthing.

She shoved her sunglasses on her nose and pulled the collar of her jacket up to hide her face and made her way into the hospital. Tara felt ridiculous skulking around the corridors of this place, immature, like she couldn't get over the pains of her childhood in a town that had probably forgotten her—but still, she took care to go unnoticed.

Finally she stood in the doorway to her father's room; habit had her flipping through his chart and taking it in with her physician's detachment. Nothing on there surprised her. The notes were mostly about keeping him comfortable, not managing his illness. Everyone knew the end was coming.

Tara put the chart away and took off her jacket and sunglasses before she stepped hesitantly into the room.

William Knowles had seen better days, but even looking at the ravages cirrhosis had wrought on his body, she couldn't help but look at him and see the younger man he had remained in her memories. Beneath the illness she could see the vestiges—thick hair that had once been sandy and sun-bleached but had gone gray, the resolute set of his mouth that she'd inherited from him, the broad shoulders built from manual labor that kept their shape even after the weight loss. For the past ten years he'd only existed to her as a voice on the phone—a yearly obligation on their birthdays, the odd phone call to let him know she'd graduated or moved or got a job. But there was her father, underneath it all.

"Hi, Dad," she said, so quietly she wasn't sure he heard her.

He breathed out, a painful-sounding rattle, and turned his head to squint at her. "Who's that?" he said.

"It's me," she said, and crossed the room to stand at the side of his bed. She hovered there for a moment, awkwardly, before taking his big hand in hers. It felt strange. She wondered if she should be more emotional than this, but the truth was, they had been estranged for so long that she had ceased to feel anything more for him than a bones-deep weariness . In the last years she'd spent at home, she'd been the one taking care of him, and she'd never had the child's debt of gratitude. There would be no confronting of her own mortality here, no trepidation how her life would change—her life had changed when she was nine.

"Tara," he said, and she saw a tear caught in the crows' feet of his eye. "Hey, kiddo."

"I'm here," she said, because she didn't know what else to say.

He wheezed again. "I didn't think you'd come. After everything—"

"Don't worry," Tara said. "Don't worry about that. I'm here now. Do you—do you want to talk?"

"No," he said, and smiled at her in a way that turned his whole face kind and open, the way she'd seen it often during his good days. "No, I just want to listen to you."

Tara smiled back at him and squeezed his hand, and she began to lie: "Well, I had a patient the other day who reminded me a lot of you—you know, tough and hard, but with that smile…"

* * *

The doctors came in to pronounce the time of death, to prepare his body for the morgue, so Tara stepped out of the room. She had to find the hospital lawyer, tie up any insurance shit, sign any papers. She pressed the tips of her fingers into her eyes and tried to massage away the pressure building there behind them, and was surprised when her fingers came away wet with tears.

He had passed while she was speaking, telling him about a particularly difficult surgery she'd assisted on—she'd seen a shadow pass over his face, and then a smile had tugged the edges of his mouth and he'd nodded with a certain kind of finality and in the space it took her to recognize the look on his face as pride, he was gone.

That—pride—she didn't know what to do with.

"Tara Knowles?" said a soft voice behind her. Tara dragged her hands across her eyes, trying to wipe away the moisture and the images, and turned around, shoving her hands into her pockets.

"Yeah?" she said, forcing a smile onto her face. The lawyer she'd met briefly was standing there with a folder of papers and a sympathetic smile, but what caught Tara's eye was the uniformed man about fifteen feet behind her, who was standing at the nurse's station. His head had snapped up at her name and he stared at her like he'd seen a ghost. "I'm sorry, excuse me just a minute," she said to the lawyer, and stepped around her to say hello to David Hale.

They stood awkwardly apart for a few moments and then he gave her a bracing pat on the shoulder. She couldn't conceal her small chirp of laughter, and to her relief a smile broke across his handsome face and he pulled her into a sincere hug.

"Hey, David," she said as she stepped back from him. "Wow, look at you. Always knew you'd end up a cop."

"Less impressive than a doctor," he said. Her brows knitted together; she cocked her head in a silent question. "Your old man," he said, by way of explanation.

"I guess he's still a frequent visitor to county."

"VIP," said David. His face softened. He had looked at her like that a lot when they were teenagers, like she was a fragile thing, and it had driven her crazy then—when the last thing in the world she wanted was to be stifled by another man. But she found herself grateful for it now; his sincerity, generous and honest, was a rare thing among men their age. "How are you doing, Tara?"

"I'm okay." She stopped herself. "I mean—not really. I'm here for my dad, actually. He just…"

She saw the realization dawn on him. "Oh. Shit, Tara, I'm sorry."

"No, don't be. I knew it was coming for a long time. I guess you probably did, too." Tara gave him a rueful smile and inclined her head back to indicate the lawyer, patiently waiting. "Look, I'm sorry, I have to wrap some things up here."

"Of course. Hey—you staying in town?"

"I don't think I can. I have a lot going on back home I need to take care of."

He didn't look disappointed, but understanding, which pleased her. They had been friends when she'd left, and saying goodbye had been hard—though she'd had more difficult goodbyes—but there was only nostalgia and kindness between them now. That suited her. It would have been hard to come back to Charming and feel the pull of it again.

"Well, don't be a stranger," David said, hugging her again. He had turned his back to walk away when impulse caught her and she called out to him.

"David." He turned around, expectant. "Do me a favor. Don't let anyone know I was here, okay?"

He smiled at her. Shrugged. "Who would I tell?"

"_Thank you_," she said, meaningfully, and when he'd disappeared around the corner she turned back to the lawyer, prepared to settle the last few matters of her father's life.

* * *

"Do you want to talk about it?" Olivia asked.

Tara slid a glass of wine across the counter to her best friend and shook her head. "No. I'm seriously fine. We didn't have the best relationship."

"Still…" said Olivia, popping a cube of cheese in her mouth and following it with a swig of the Malbec. "Two dead parents. That's pretty heavy."

Tara shrugged. The truth was, she had made her peace with the absence of both of her parents long ago. It wasn't as painful as it had been when she was a teenager—when she had no other family and hardly any friends, only the runaway wild love with a boy for whom she'd been tempted to give up her whole life. Things were different now. She was different. "Like I said, we weren't close. And besides, death is different for us. You know that."

"True." Olivia heaved a sigh. Like Tara, she practiced at Chicago Presbyterian, a resident in cardiothoracic surgery. Tara had taken to her right away—she was blunt and irresistibly funny, a bright spot in a sometimes dark line of work. They had gone through their internship year together, a sort of friendship baptism-by-fire if Tara had ever experienced one. "When's your flight again?"

"Eight in the morning."

"Shit. I'm gonna miss you." A sly smile crept across her face. "But the apartment makes up for it."

"Yeah, I'm sure," Tara said drily. She loved her apartment here in Chicago—it was a cozy well-lit walk up in an older neighborhood, the kind of place where neighbors knew your name but not your life story, which suited her well. It was the first place she'd ever gone to the trouble to decorate, to really live in, and it was the only place that had ever really felt like home. She was sad to be leaving it, but it was a relief that Olivia had volunteered to sublet it from her for the year she would be gone. She didn't want to deal with selling off or storing most of the things she owned—and it was nice to know that, however her great Belfast experiment went, she had a place to come home to.

"You know, I'm not surprised you want to go. You've always seemed very Irish to me."

Tara cocked her head. "Yeah? How?"

A mischievous smile crept across Olivia's face. "You know. Like it's always raining wherever you are."

"Oh, funny," Tara said drily.

"Very serious. Very buttoned up."

"I wonder how I stand you, then?"

Olivia leaned back in her chair, spreading her arms out, satisfaction obvious on her face. "Oh, _everyone_ loves me." But her eyes softened and she reached out to take Tara's hand in her own. "And I love you."

"Liv," said Tara, touched.

"I just want you to know, whatever happens with your family—they're not it for you. They're not everything. You have family here. _We're_ family."

"Oh, God," Tara said, with feeling. "I love you, too. I'm going to miss you so much. I don't think I've even thought about it—"

"Tara," her friend interrupted. "Tara. We're surgeons. We have dignity. Please shut up."

And she pulled her into a hug, the tight, bone-crushing kind of hug that could exist only in the same space as real love, and for the first time in her life Tara knew a goodbye that she was determined would not be permanent.

* * *

_Three months later_

"Aunt Tara!"

She wasn't, strictly speaking, Rose's aunt—the five-year old was really more of a cousin—but Tara had found she rather liked the title, and the kids that came with it. Her nieces and nephew were a rambunctious lot, much like their parents, but sweet-natured and full of love.

"Hi, Rosie." Tara kicked Amelia's door closed behind her as her arms were suddenly full of squirming limbs. She pressed a kiss into her dark hair. "Where's your mom?"

"Tara, is that you?" Tara followed the harried voice to the kitchen and found Amelia there, standing over the stove, her hair tied up haphazardly. Tara's breath caught in her throat as it still sometimes did when she saw Amy. She was older now than Caitlin had been when she'd died, and she looked so much like her—the same dark hair and pale skin, same narrow shoulders and long neck—that it still continued to trick Tara's brain, if just for a moment.

But then, Amelia had told her she felt the same way about _her_.

"You're early," said Amelia accusingly.

"Sorry. Had an easy day, figured I'd come by and help with dinner."

"Make yourself useful, then, grate the cheddar." Tara set Rose down and set herself up shoulder-to-shoulder with Amelia, dutifully grating a block of cheddar until her fingertips were in danger of shredding against the box grater. She had barely finished when Amelia's husband Jack breezed through the kitchen, gave her a warm kiss on the cheek, and asked her to fix a few more settings for the table, please, because he was expecting more guests?

"More?" Tara asked, laughter at the edge of her throat. "How many _more_ people can this family invite to dinner?" She saw a smile flit across Amelia's face at the word _family_ and found herself mirroring the expression. They _were_ a family. They were, in fact, hers.

Belfast had, to her still-lingering disbelief, started to feel like home.

Upon arriving, nearly overnight, she had gone from having no one to having many _someones_. There were Amelia and Jack and their three daughters, Eleanor and Georgia and Rose (and a son on the way). There was her uncle Sean, barely six years older than her, and his wife Megan and their infant son Harry. More cousins, more in-laws, all of whom swung by the Collinses' house once or twice a month for Friday dinners or Sunday roasts and had treated her like family they'd known all their lives. It reminded her a little of the atmosphere of another family she'd been privy to, once, but without the undercurrent of danger—of loyalty tempered in blood shed, not shared.

"Just the girls' babysitter and her ma," said Jack. "You seen them round town, I think. They own a shop."

Tara set the long table that took up nearly the whole of the dining room's length, and the smaller table in the kitchen for the kids who didn't want to eat with the adults. She sat there with seven-year-old Georgia on her lap and talking idly to Amelia and Jack while they finished preparing the food—

"I've a bit of swelling in my ankles," Amelia admitted as she pulled two dishes from the oven, though at the seven month mark this was not particularly suspicious.

"Normal swelling? Like with the last three?"

"Aye, like that."

"Sit down, then," Jack interrupted, and stood as if to relieve her. Amy swatted at him with an oven mitt.

"Stay back, you oaf, I've a delicate dish here—"

"_Cottage pie? _Delicate?"

Tara hid her smile, and pulled her arms tighter around her niece.

The kitchen door opened and in a moment Tara felt a hint of scruff on her neck, smelled the soft sandalwood cologne that Finn favored, and she twisted her head around to receive a kiss from her boyfriend.

Tara's heart thrilled, just a bit, watching Finn give his hellos to Amy and Jack and the girls. He was a boyhood friend of Jack's and she had been reluctant to date him, her relationships with her family still so fragile, but Amy had fairly forced the two of them on a date and that had been it for her. Their relationship was still in its early days, but by all accounts he was everything she was looking for: smart and accomplished (a bioengineer), handsome (with lightly freckled skin and stormy gray eyes), and genuinely good hearted (she only had to see him with the kids to realize it).

"Hello, love," he said. "Sean around?"

"Not yet," she said.

"You'll have to do, then," he said with another kiss, and as he sat beside her Georgia crawled from Tara's lap to his. "Georgie, you're looking more beautiful than ever. How old are you now, twenty-six?"

Tara hid a smile as she watched them, but her eyes caught Amelia's and her aunt gave her a knowing sort of look. The kind a mother would give a daughter.

There was a knock at the door then, but the guests must have been familiar around the house because there came the sound of the door opening and closing soon after. Around the corner appeared a young redhead and an older—although still quite young—blonde woman.

"Hi darlin'," said Jack, embracing the both of them. "Happy you could come."

"Course," said the girl. To Georgia: "'Lo, little monster."

"You've not met our cousin Tara, have you, Trinny?"

"I haven't," she said, and stuck her hand out. "I'm Trinity. I look after these little hellions."

"Nice to meet you," she said, standing. "Tara."

"And this is her mum," said Jack. The blonde woman gave her a small smile. Tara could see a tattoo on her breast, just peeking out from the edge of her shirt, but couldn't make out the design. "Maureen."

"Hi, love. I've heard so much about you," she said, and pulled a rather surprised Tara into a warm hug. "You're from a long line of good women, you know."

"Did you—did you know my mother?" Tara asked as she drew back.

"Oh, no, I didn't have the pleasure. But everyone round here knew of Caitlin Byrne."

"Oh, stop," said Amy with a roll of her eyes. "All anyone knew of her was that she broke my parents' heart and disgraced the family name."

"Aye, and what an inspiration she was to us all." Maureen winked at Tara and she found herself smiling back at her. The truth was she loved these small stories about her mother. In California Caitlin had been loving and affectionate but solitary, a woman who seemingly only existed in the spheres of her husband and her daughter. Tara couldn't remember her having any friends. But she had continued to exist here in Belfast, in stories passed down of the wayward girl who'd broken her family's hearts to follow her own. It made her feel closer to her mother, somehow, to know about the girl she used to be.

The kitchen door opened again and Sean and Megan came from outside, looking rather harried. "Sorry we're late," said Megan.

"Where's my nephew?" Jack demanded.

"With my mum," she said. "He's running a bit of a fever, we didn't want to bring him out."

"That's fine, then," he said, mollified. "Do you need Tara to check on him?"

She had grown used to this: her family offering her services to anyone who needed them, baby or not. And she didn't mind; her job here in Belfast was slower than it had been in Chicago, and privately she was proud to be held in high regard, to give back to this family as much as she'd gotten from them.

"No, no, she needn't trouble herself—"

"It's no trouble," Tara interrupted. "Really."

Megan shot her a grateful smile. "We'll call you if we need you, aye?"

"Of course. Just let me know."

They were interrupted by Amy dropping the cottage pie on the table, and then the kitchen was a flurry of activity—putting out the dishes, taking their seats, talking over each other in the grand tradition of the family dinner—and as they finally sat for dinner Tara could not help the feeling: she loved—she was in love with—this family, and she knew she would do anything to keep them close.

* * *

Tara woke up to a knock at her door.

She wanted to ignore it, but it went on, more insistent, and she worried it might wake her neighbors. So she pulled a flannel robe onto her shoulders as she stumbled through the darkness of her quiet house to the front door and opened it—realizing, as soon as she had done it, that she _never_ would have been so cavalier in Chicago and would probably be murdered shortly for her lack of caution.

But it was the woman she had met that night, Maureen, who stood on the stoop, the hood of her dark sweater pulled up in a vain defense against the rain. "Sorry about the hour, love," she said. Tara blinked at her.

"Is everything okay?" Panic descended quickly on her. "Is—is Amelia okay? Is there something wrong with the baby?"

"No, no, everything's fine with the family," said Maureen. "Do you mind if I come in?"

Tara opened the door wider, ushering Maureen in, staring after her in confusion. "Do you…need something?"

"I do, as a matter of fact. You're a doctor, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Tara, slowly.

"You ever patch up a bullet wound?"

She had worked in Chicago, so the answer to that was a resounding _yes_, but she had no idea why Maureen was asking. "Of course."

"Ever do it outside of a hospital?"

"Maureen," said Tara, "is there something you need me to help with?"

Maureen smiled at her, a grim sort of expression that made her look older and tired but fiercer, too.

"Well," she said, "if you're offering."

* * *

Tara had picked up her kit and driven with Maureen to the shop she owned. _Ashby's Provisions_, read the sign, and it was a quaint little place that seemed as quiet and unassuming as any other on the block. But Maureen had led her through a cramped hallway to the apartment occupying the top floors, and in the kitchen she found a man laid out on the table, blood staining the leg of his jeans, and a leather cut on his shoulders.

She'd seen that cut before.

But surely—there were motorcycle clubs all over the world, and the only one she'd known intimately had been mostly a West Coast club. There was no way—_no way_—that long-forgotten past had followed her all the way to Ireland, not when she had lost almost everything trying to escape it.

But as Maureen rushed over to him, whispering soothing words, the man groaned and turned into her embrace, and Tara could read the words on the back of the cut.

_SONS OF ANARCHY_

_BELFAST_

"Oh, god damn it," she said.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN**: Not dead! What up! Thanks so much to anyone who has taken the time to review, follow/favorite, or read this story so far. I appreciate it so much! I hope you enjoy this chapter as well. It's a little slow, but I promise…things are happening.

* * *

But only a hush of the heart  
That has too much to keep,  
Only memories waking  
That sleep so light a sleep.  
—_It Is Not A Word_, Sara Teasdale

* * *

"Is it bad?" Maureen snapped her head around, and Tara regretted the oath she'd spoken out loud.

"No," she said, drawing closer. "No, I don't think so." The leg had been tied off already, so she pulled the scissors from her kit and cut into his jeans to reveal the wound. It didn't look that bad. In fact, it looked like hardly more than a graze—grisly, but no bullets to fish out or too much internal damage.

"Who's this, Mo?"

"Her name's Tara, love," said Maureen. "Friend of the family." Tara raised her eyebrows at that. Maureen had seemed nice, and it was clear she was a close friend of Tara's extended family—but between the two of them, there was no blood and no friendship. She was here because she couldn't in good conscience leave someone wounded without attending to them, but after the man on the table was patched up, she would sever the tie. Tara had done it before—and the consequences had been so much greater then. To Tara, Maureen said, "Your patient here is McGee. Keith McGee."

"Nice to meet you, Tara." He laughed, and it turned into a hiss as she set to work cleaning the wound. "My apologies for the circumstances."

"I've met others under worse," she said. It was true. She remembered being seventeen and meeting her boyfriend's mother for the first time when she sprung them both from the drunk tank. In fact, that reminded her—"You have any whisky?"

"'Course I have." Maureen sounded almost affronted.

"He might want to have a little of that." Maureen busied herself rummaging around for the alcohol, and the amber bottle was scarcely in McGee's large hand before he took several long pulls of it. _Or a lot_, she thought.

It did end up being an easy job: disinfect, clean, suture and bandage. She could do it in her sleep. Some days—during her internship, when she had been surviving on hour-long naps stolen during the long stretches for which she'd been on-call—she was fairly sure she _had_ done it in her sleep. It would be up to McGee to procure antibiotics, but the wound wasn't so bad and her work was pristine. "You're done, Mr. McGee," she said lightly, but whether from the adrenaline crash or the pain, he had already passed out, and her words went unnoticed. She gave him a bracing pat on the knee, fond in spite of herself. "Maureen—"

The woman in question was staring at McGee, the corners of her eyes turned up with affection, soothed now that the worst of it had been wiped away. "Yeah, love?"

"This," Tara said, making a sharp gesture with her arm, as if to draw the line between them, "I can't be involved in. I could lose my job, Maureen."

"I get it." And she did, it seemed: there was no malice or anger in her voice, only relief. Tara didn't know Maureen, but if she was anything like another woman she used to know, she wasn't sure she could take her at her word. An MC's president's old lady—well, Tara knew the kind of grit that took. The kind of lies you told to get by. "I won't be asking you again. But if you need anything, Tara—anything at all—it's yours. I swear it."

Tara looked at her askance, and then gave her a quick nod. She didn't intend on cashing in her favor with the Sons of Anarchy. After this, she would move on, cut contact with Maureen and make sure her own family weren't wrapped up in the same bullshit.

Even so.

She knew the kind of weight that a favor from the Sons carried. And if, God forbid, things were ever so bad that it was the sort of favor she'd need—

Well.

She'd remember.

* * *

Tara was jumpy at work the next day. In the rumblings of trains she heard the far-off roar of motorcycles; passing around every corner, she expected to see long blond hair and a swaggering walk. It was a slow day at the hospital—wellness exams and minor checkups for the most part—which was more of a curse than a blessing. She thrived on the adrenaline rush of surgery, the way she moved as if on autopilot, like it was the only thing her hands had ever been meant for. When she was in the OR, she knew real peace. Completion.

When she was young it had never occurred to her to be a surgeon—that she _could_ be one. She had been smart and talented, but occasionally wayward, and anyway she hadn't grown up in the sort of town that made you believe you could be anything. So she'd gone off to college without any certain intentions but a desire to make something herself. Somewhere along the way she stumbled into a neuroscience major, and with that came a world to which she had never imagined she would belong. Medicine came naturally to her, and what was more, she was _good_ at it. First had come the terrifying decision to apply to med school, the endless hours studying, the complete abandonment of self-esteem as she took a frank look at her strengths and weaknesses and weighed her _desire_ to do this versus her _capability_ for it.

But she needn't have worried—med school had been tough to get into, tougher to finish, but she had done it. More than that, she had excelled. Every class, every new theory and technique: it just made _sense_. It was the first thing Tara had ever felt completely assured in her talent for; it was a relationship more deep and long-lasting than most she'd experienced with actual people.

She was meant for surgery. She knew it like she knew the lilting sound of her nieces' voices, or her fingers pressed tightly into the skin of Finn's back, or the look of a cloudless California sky: some things were better understood with the heart.

And here she was, at the hospital, unable to focus on the thing she'd devoted the better part of the last decade to entirely.

It came as a relief when she had her next appointment, if only for the opportunity to get out of her own head. He was a cute kid, Joe Powell, two years old and cherubic, soft with baby fat. His parents had the look she recognized on most new parents, barely-restrained panic lacing most of their words, the underlying sentiment clear: _Am I doing this right? Are we bad parents?_

"I noticed Joe didn't have any existing medical records," she said, once the introductions were over. The parents shared a look.

"No," said the father. "He's just been adopted…" he trailed off helplessly.

"The adoption agency didn't have his records?" Tara asked, her curiosity piqued. It wasn't exactly common, but it wasn't unheard of either, although in a country like Ireland it was certainly surprising.

"No," he said again.

The mother pitched in: "He was adopted out of the orphanage—from the church—" She cut herself off, and Tara felt compelled to direct a smile to both of them, sympathetic to their fears.

"I'd like to go ahead and get him his immunizations and vaccinations then—" she said, and went on to describe the necessary panels Joe would need, grateful that they seemed to relax as the check-up went on.

When they had gone, when the room was free of their quiet murmurs and Joe's giggles, Tara leaned back in her chair and stared at the white ceiling. Her thoughts echoed dully in her skull, dampened only by sheer resolve.

2:30 in the afternoon.

She still had a ways to go.

* * *

A few days later and Tara had managed to stop checking behind her at every corner. She hadn't heard from Maureen, much less the Sons, and was satisfied that their bargain had been a true one. With luck, McGee wouldn't even remember her face.

The insomnia, she hadn't quite managed to kick.

"Lot on your mind, love?"

"Nothing important," she said, turning over in bed to face Finn. He had been staying at her place a lot recently—not that she was complaining. Finn was perhaps the least complicated relationship she'd ever had. Perhaps the one partner that she had truly, without reservation, _liked_. Oh, it was too early to say _love_, and besides she sometimes doubted she could love anyone as wildly as the boy she had loved when she was eighteen, but Finn was unabashedly good. Uncomplicated but not naive, with hidden depths and a sharp mind. Unfalteringly kind. When she looked him in the eyes, as she did now, her heart still thumped gently in its cage.

"Go to sleep, then," he said, dropping a kiss on her forehead. Tara's eyes fluttered closed, and her lips curled up in a smile. She listened to him rustle on his side of the bed, her eyes still shut, and she could tell when he turned on his side away from her, dragging the covers just a bit. In a few moments' time his breaths evened out—he really was the most infuriatingly easy sleeper—and Tara could tell he was lost to the world and to her.

In the darkness, she opened her eyes to stare at the smooth lines of his back, the way they caught the moon's glimmer through her thin curtains. Finn was easy in sleep. Peaceful and unguarded. She reached one hand out, hesitating, her fingers webbing apart to touch gently on his shoulder. In his slumber he eased into her touch like he craved its comfort.

Tara wondered if he would still feel the same, if he knew the sort of person she had been.

For years, she had managed to beat the demons back; when her thoughts had drifted to the life she'd left behind, Tara had at least been secure in the knowledge that it was really, truly _behind_ her. She hadn't ever considered going back to Charming, not even during her first year at school, when things had been the hardest. She had pressed on and on, ever forward, and a single encounter with the Sons of Anarchy had undone that. It was a harsh reminder of the person she'd been, the sort of things she'd accepted—the things that had been done around her and to her. Tara had lost a part of herself in Charming, or maybe she had never been a whole person until the left it. Whatever the case, she hated that it had followed her here, all the way to Ireland, all the way to her real family.

She drew her hand from Finn's back and held it gently in her own other hand, relishing the heat his skin had imparted on hers, the tangible proof that this was a real thing. Finn was real and this life was real. It was what mattered—not the girl she had been a decade ago, not the life she had left behind, not the decisions that had haunted her all the way across the ocean. Tara would remind herself of that: she would not let the specter of the Sons of Anarchy dictate her life here, too.

(In a few months' time, when things were very, very different, Tara would look back on this moment and the promises she had made to herself and how they had ended up, and the sentiment would remain the same as it had from the moment the Sons of Anarchy had reentered her life: _Goddammit_.)


	3. Chapter 3

**AN:** As always, thank you very much for the reviews and favorites and follows. I am very, very bad at responding to feedback, but I promise you it is treasured. So treasured, in fact, that I am inspired enough to not take a year to update! I am trying to get better at being able to publish chapters that I am happy with, but not laboring over them for months because I'm unhappy with certain turns of phrase. I'm trying to write it, edit it just a little bit, and send it out into the world—little warts and all, which hopefully (for you) means more frequent updates. Thanks a million again.

* * *

Surely spring has returned to me, this time  
not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet  
it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.  
—_Vita Nova_, Louise Gluck

* * *

Of course, peace couldn't last indefinitely.

There was a family dinner, as there was often, and Maureen and Trinity arrived for the festivities, welcomed warmly by Tara's family. Dinner itself was a raucous affair, and afterwards, when the children were nodding off in front of the fire and conversation had broken off into smaller pockets, Maureen cornered Tara.

"I wanted to say _thank you_ again," she said, "for what you did."

Tara, half-drunk and nervous, was desperate to be out of the conversation. "I took an oath," she said half-heartedly, and realized belatedly how stupid it sounded.

"Aye, but oaths aren't always kept, see?" said Maureen. "You do—you do have that Byrne blood."

Tara felt—strangely—choked up. Months had passed since she had arrived in Ireland, but the comparison to a parent meant complimentarily was still unfamiliar. She had grown up as poor white trash—the girl who drove a too-big car to retrieve her father from bars from the age of fourteen, who did the grocery shopping herself with change picked from the couch cushions when her dad's paycheck couldn't stretch that far, who was both mother and child all in one. Favorable comparisons to her blood remained something she was entirely unequipped to deal with. "Thank you," she managed.

"Have you heard of the Sons before?" Maureen said idly. Tara choked on her whisky, aware of the strange look Maureen sent her as she tried to adjust to the burn in her throat. The other woman continued on: "Well, you might've, but they're not all bad. You did a good thing, love, I promise you. Keith—McGee is a good one."

Tara looked at her askance, and then said, haltingly, "All right."

There was a pause, and then Maureen said, pulling the neck of her shirt down just enough to expose the lines of the ink tattooed into her breast, "This was for another man, though. My _old_ old man. I was young and dumb, see." She met Tara's eyes, and Tara felt the heat in her gaze. It wasn't anger, but something more foreboding—recognizance. "I could spot one of these a mile away, do you know what I'm saying?"

Tara felt her mouth go dry. It had been stupid to keep the tattoo, she knew that, but she hadn't been able to part with the girl she had been—not out of any lingering fondness for that life, but to recognize how far she had come. She was so different from the Tara Knowles of 18 years who had never been outside of California, who had lived her whole life in the same small backwater. The life she had now—the life that mattered—had started when she was already an adult. There was no one in her life to remember how far she had come, no one but Tara herself to pay tribute to the girl she was. The tattoo was an inside joke, a private reminder, but it had come back in the worst way. When had Maureen even seen it? When she had been bent over the table, maybe, treating McGee—

"Don't worry," said Maureen. "If you're out, you're out, and good luck to you. But—times being what they are—I wouldn't flash it around Belfast, love. Best to watch your back."

What did that mean? Tara remembered those few years after Jax's father had died, when hidden in between the lines of the newspapers were pieces to a puzzle. Bodies found wearing Mayan colors, shootings in Charming's downtown district where she knew the shopkeepers and bar owners paid SAMCRO for protection, the drug bust that had splashed fifteen mugshots across the centerfold. It had been dangerous to be affiliated with SAMCRO then; her father had avoided all the usual hang around haunts because of it. That seemed liked it had happened in another life, and it was a life that had hardly touched Tara yet. Was Belfast under the same pall that Charming had been, when being seen with the crow outside of Sons territory had been both a warning and a target painted on your back?

It was hard to fathom. It was hard, and moreover, she didn't _want_ to; she wanted Belfast to remain the magical place it had been since she'd arrived here. Somewhere safe and comfortable; somewhere she could make a life.

Tara nodded, still silent, horrified and grateful in equal measure.

That, it seemed, was a feeling she was going to have to get used to.

* * *

That night, still somewhat foggy with drink, Tara had retreated into her apartment and opened up her laptop. She'd stared at the search page for a full minute before she had typed in—with much trepidation—_sons of anarchy belfast_.

It wasn't as shocking as she'd expected. There were no exposés or gory headlines, only brief mentions here and there of a motorcycle club that most seemed to regard as a nuisance rather than a criminal enterprise. Whatever dangers an association with the Sons of Anarchy's Belfast chapter would bring upon her seemed fairly innocuous when held up against Maureen's stern warning.

Tara stared at the screen's blue light, chewing absently on her cuticle as she contemplated searching something else. She stared, and she stared, and finally she could take no more and she typed all in one rush:

_sons of anarchy charming california_

It was a more fruitful search than the previous had been.

Looking over the headlines, Tara's heart jumped when she came across this on the very first page: _ Sons of Anarchy affiliate found slain in home_. Had it been someone she had known? Had it been someone she loved? Had it been Bobby, who had passed her bags of his famous—and surprisingly healthy—muffins to feed her during the lean weeks ("_A brain like that needs real food to feed it_," he'd told her, and then occasionally treated her to baked goods with weed when no one was looking)? Or Lowell, who had been so very sweet and so very wayward, and who had never quite gotten over the death of his father?

Or the boy who she had loved almost more than she'd been able to bear?

In the end, it was a dockworker who'd been found, the victim of a homicide, and though Tara had never known him she was still ashamed at how her heart had leapt when she realized that it was no one from her old life. He was still a person—a son or a father or a brother, someone with a life and a purpose, and it had been snuffed out senselessly.

(Well, she assumed.)

Time got away from her as she sat on her bed, leaning forward into the computer screen the way a child would lean into a story that demanded the rapt attention of its listener, suddenly greedy for knowledge on the people she had left behind. None of them had anything like a Facebook, which was altogether unsurprising, but it wasn't hard to dig up other clues on them—mostly in court cases or mugshots.

It was in this way that for the first time in a decade she came across news of Jax Teller.

A little breath escaped her at seeing his mugshot, something between an exhale and the sharp jab to the lungs, a complete confusion of her whole nervous system that rendered her entirely unable to breathe. He was—he was the same, mostly. Older, obviously, and his hair slightly longer, more of a beard than he'd been able to grow at eighteen. But those eyes: there was no changing them. In all the years she'd known him Jax had never been able to hide his feelings. It was always the eyes that gave him away.

In his mugshot, Tara saw nothing more than disdain.

Jax had been picked up on charges for illegal possession of a weapon and sentenced to six months in jail. That meant he would have gotten out a year ago, maybe. Depending.

She felt her mind start to race—had he gotten out of jail after six months? released early for good behavior? he had never been able to control his anger; had it gotten him in trouble and given him a longer sentence? what was he doing now, right at this moment, the question she refused to let herself ask—

Recognizing the obsession she was spiraling into, and quickly, Tara slammed her laptop shut and pushed it away from her as if physical distance could render her protected from the reminders she had herself dredged up. This was driving her crazy, the memories of SAMCRO, even when there was no reason for it. Belfast's charter was unremarkable, and there were thousands of miles between here and California. Maureen had an inkling that she had once known the Sons—if Tara's inclination was right and it was only SAMCRO patched members who marked their women with the crow, Maureen even knew what charter she'd associated with.

But—she kept reminding herself—that meant nothing here. Jax had hardly been a member for two years when she'd left him, and though his legacy was the most significant across the whole of the club, Tara herself had made very little of an impression. Occasional hell raiser, mostly an introvert: who would remember the little girl who had escaped Charming at eighteen and left only a few broken hearts behind her?

_No one_, she thought, and the sentiment was both comforting and heartbreaking in equal measure.

* * *

In the end, Tara should have expected the call—at the very least, she should have expected the fragile balance her world retained to collapse—but she didn't. Even with Maureen, even with McGee, she had gone on living in her bubble, as weeks went on without an incident, and she had grown complacent where she should have been watchful.

Not that there was anything she could have done about this.

Tara sat, one hand to her mouth, in Amelia's kitchen as they both gazed at Sean, who had been alternating between tears and violent anger for the better part of an hour.

Harry was gone.

_Harry was gone_.

The words didn't seem real to her, but they were true, evidenced by the pain on her uncle's face, so unbearable she couldn't help but feel it too, as if experiencing it with him could lift some of his burden. But it couldn't—nothing could. What could ease the pain of the loss of a child?

"We were turned around for a minute," he said thickly. "For a _minute__—_and he was gone—"

Part of her, the uncharitable part, wanted to slap him in the face: Tara wanted to say, _You__'__re no use to him drunk and sobbing_. But it was a reaction borne of emotion, not logic, and she could never be so cruel as that, anyway. This was her blood, both in front of her and missing.

"We'll find him," Amelia said lowly.

Jack, who sat beside him nursing a drink as well, said, "We're not so big a country, you know. It'll be fast."

For her part, Tara could say nothing, do nothing; she was useless here. Her mouth had frozen, gone dumb with shock, and though she desperately wanted to reach out and comfort Sean, she found that she was incapable of moving.

The house was strangely silent. They had shuttled off the kids to stay with Trinity. No one had had the words to explain, but she'd taken one look at their collective state of shock and assured them that whatever the problem was, she and Maureen could look after the children for as long as was necessary. They had been excited to leave, the girls tripping over each other in their excitement for what they understood as an impulsive weekend away. Tara didn't know how they would break the news.

She hoped desperately that they wouldn't have to.

Megan was upstairs. She had arrived at the house fairly catatonic, and while Amy and Jack coaxed the story from Sean, Tara had stripped her of her clothes—she'd cried so hard at the police station she'd thrown up—and put her into pajamas, tucking her into bed with a kiss on the forehead. She'd stood there for a moment, watching her, contemplating the sort of grief a mother must experience—and then Tara had realized that Megan's eyes were wide open, staring at the wall, and she'd felt suddenly voyeuristic in her clinical examination of her, suddenly ashamed.

So she'd tiptoed quietly back downstairs, and she had remained useless thereafter.

It was quiet—everyone wrapped up in their own thoughts, their own miseries—when the thought suddenly occurred to Tara, and she stood straight up as if snapping to attention. "Excuse me," she said, somewhat blankly, and wandered out the door, ignoring Amy calling after her. She thought that she might have passed Finn, felt his hand slipping on her shoulder, but it could have been a dream. This could have all been a dream.

She thought again of how Sean and Megan had gone to the police, and how they had been helpful and determined to do good, but almost frustrated by what her uncle and his wife had been unable to tell them. _Did you see anyone suspicious, anyone who put you off? _No, no one. _Is there anyone who would want to hurt you?_ No one. _Have you had any threats made against you? _Nothing. _Is there _anything _you can tell us?_ Nothing.

It wasn't that Tara was particularly distrustful of police, but this was her _family_, and she felt somehow that being constrained by the letter of the law was only to their detriment. What they needed was someone with connections to the seedier parts of Belfast, who would have unfettered access to the sort of relationships that took cops months of dedicated undercover work to feign.

What they needed was someone who would never do this kind of work without a high price. Luckily for Tara, she happened to be in the sort of profession that came highly valued to the sort of people she was looking for. And—more importantly—someone owed her a favor.

Tara found herself suddenly all at once at her destination. She had walked there in a haze, entirely unaware of her surroundings, and she realized with a start that she was soaked to the bone with rain. She blinked the droplets out of her eyes as the door opened.

"Is everything quite all right, love?" Maureen said, stepping outside and closing the door behind her, locking away the sounds of children's laughter that had somehow already become strange and unfamiliar to Tara. She hadn't heard anything on the walk over here, only a dull buzzing in her own ears, as if every part of her nervous system was both screaming at her not to do this and yet also wrestled into compliance by her strong will, which had a mind entirely of its own. Tara knew: she had already made her decision. "Are you here to pick up the children?"

"No," said Tara flatly. "I'm here about the Sons of Anarchy."

"What about them?"

Tara swallowed hard, and tasted blood in her mouth. "I think I need to take you up on that favor."


End file.
